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How do you get people to use features on your website + maximize engagement?

Hey!

Bit of a dilemma here: I've been running an online community for the past 5 months and it's been growing steadily, and we should be hitting 1000 users in the next month or so, which is great. We've been adding new features to the site as well which some people seem to use.

People on our site come to post their side projects, but hardly anyone actually interacts with each other and I'm feeling that the site is underutilized and people are just using it to advertise their projects/products and have no intention of using the site for what is for.

So I guess the real question is: how should I go about maximizing engagement on the site?

Cheers!

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    Do you feel like users of IndieHackers have similar behavior? Maybe it's up to each person's own interests. Can't really engage with every content you stumble upon.
    Is there any way to reward them maybe?

    I use a daily giveaway approach (in form of in-app tokens) in my product, and noticed that some users are logging in just to claim the daily reward.
    https://www.indiehackers.com/product/voize

    Perhaps some kind of a daily reward can keep your product on their minds more frequently, and thus they would engage while they are already there?
    Can you reward their engagement in some other way perhaps?

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      The thing with IndieHackers is that a lot of posts and content here create some sort of discussion which is awesome!

      We did add a rewards system so you get 'clout' which is the karma-equivalent on reddit, and you can unlock achievements on the site as you do certain things which gives you more clout (i.e. comment x times, upvote x amount of posts etc.). What you're doing with Voize sounds cool. Currently you can't do anything with points that are awarded to users but maybe creating some sort of system where you can redeem certain things with them could work for us.

      Another way we've been trying to maintain engagement is also through our newsletter which sorta works and gets sent out every Sunday. It keeps some people coming back to the site.

      Other than that I don't really know what else would keep people on the site.

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        The thing with IndieHackers is that a lot of posts and content here create some sort of discussion which is awesome!

        Yeah I joined here recently and realized there is quite some engagement.
        However, I do not see any sort-comments feature? Comments are by default sorted by most upvotes. Thus it seems to me that we are working against each other by not up-voting other people's content. Something to think about - if we want others to see our comments, we must not upvote other comments because it pushes them up, thus our comments are less likely to be read by others.

        We did add a rewards system so you get 'clout'
        Yeah sounds like badges, or karma. I guess that's also some form of gamification, I think it might work, tho I don't know for how long.
        For example worhtless Internet points such as reputation on StackOverflow actually kept me posting there for a while, got over 9k points:
        https://stackoverflow.com/users/1981247/traxo
        Yeah, it's addictive, but in the long run these points don't say much other than that the users is persistent in creating content, and almost nothing about the quality thereof.
        So I guess it all depends what you really aim for.

        On Voize I introduced "merits", which is actually an upvote by someone you follow (i.e. know or trust). If content has 7 merits for example, it means that it's upvoted by 7 people that you follow. That should perhaps tell you more about the content than just seeing a big number which represents upvotes or views by who knows who.

        The reason for not including reddit-like karma and similar points, is also because I consider them meaningless, they can be gamed by bots. Well I guess in terms of keeping people engaged, that might backfire on me, lol.

        do certain things which gives you more clout

        This might also introduce more spam perhaps, because creating the content is awarded, instead of the quality thereof.

        Other than that I don't really know what else would keep people on the site.

        Think about what I wrote about how we work against each-other here. Try to solve similar problems if you have any. I'm not sure what your communities are about, but they should be encouraged to work together and make friendships, and not work against each other. Give users a community they want to come back to.

        Aaaand... maybe best to just ask them what they like and dislike! :)

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          On Voize I introduced "merits", which is actually an upvote by someone you follow (i.e. know or trust). If content has 7 merits for example, it means that it's upvoted by 7 people that you follow. That should perhaps tell you more about the content than just seeing a big number which represents upvotes or views by who knows who.

          The reason for not including reddit-like karma and similar points, is also because I consider them meaningless, they can be gamed by bots. Well I guess in terms of keeping people engaged, that might backfire on me, lol.

          I also checked your project out and funny I actually had a similar idea (being able to comment on youtube videos w/ disabled comments but Voize is even better), glad you made it a reality! Also thanks for posting it on SP :)

          Also add oAuth to it, you'll see more signups :)

          And you're right, points are meaningless unless something can be done with them. On our site we used to have a "best" view where you could view projects with the most upvotes of all-time, but I found that it was abused by people just creating multiple accounts upvoting their projects on them so I got rid of it :(.

          I do try to ask people stuff in our community but no one ever seems to get back to me haha. The one thing people did seem to support was having a marketplace so that people could buy/sell side projects, so I'll probably work on that soon.

          This might also introduce more spam perhaps, because creating the content is awarded, instead of the quality thereof.

          Perhaps that might also end up happening. I kind like and dislike ProductHunt's system where you have to upvote and come back to their site for 3 days straight before you actually have privileges. One one end it's annoying, but on the other end it actually helped them eliminate a lot of spammers. Maybe some sort of system like that would work for a larger platform, but definitely not for smaller websites haha.

          In terms of upvoting, Reddit has a bunch of filters so it's pretty hard to game their upvote/system. I like how you did it.

          Another thing I wanted to try was change the upvote system to resemble that of medium's where you can 'applaud' any post up to 50 times. I was thinking we do something similar and limit it so that users can 'applaud' posts any number of times, but they can only upvote them up to 12 times a day.

          Think about what I wrote about how we work against each-other here. Try to solve similar problems if you have any. I'm not sure what your communities are about, but they should be encouraged to work together and make friendships, and not work against each other. Give users a community they want to come back to.

          Basically the idea of sideprojects.net is to help people get early users on their side projects as well as receive feedback on them. The problem is that people join the site and post, which is nice, but feedback is minimal and that used to be one of our selling points. One thing me and my co-founder were doing was responding to almost every single post trying to set a model for new users to follow--and it kind of worked, but we both fell back on it because it's hard to keep up haha.

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            Also add oAuth to it, you'll see more signups :)

            Oh yeah, you are right. I'll try to set it up.

            The one thing people did seem to support was having a marketplace so that people could buy/sell side projects, so I'll probably work on that soon.

            Huh, that's interesting demand. I'll try to remember to keep an eye on it to see how that goes for you.

            Perhaps that might also end up happening. I kind like and dislike ProductHunt's system where you have to upvote and come back to their site for 3 days straight before you actually have privileges. One one end it's annoying, but on the other end it actually helped them eliminate a lot of spammers. Maybe some sort of system like that would work for a larger platform, but definitely not for smaller websites haha.

            I don't like it when we have to put much thought in upvoting. Some months ago I looked into how steemit has done their algos, basically they had to change it few times so that bots stop gaming them, tho I guess you can never really stop it from happening. I had no time to document everything because I was focused on working mostly :(
            But here is a quote I wrote at the private forum, maybe it will interest you, (I know, it's out of context or perhaps you are not familiar with steemit, but could be useful info):

            Lately I've been doing some research with [regards to steemit rewards system] and what I noticed was that if upvotes use money from common-pool-of-money to reward content, then we will always end up with some kind of circlejerk(s).
            That's the core problem (on a global scale) which will not and perhaps even can't be solved in steem.
            The flaw for example resulted in numerous bots being created that spam the network and reward each other (by both posting and upvoting).
            Another result of the flaw is that users eventually become incentivized to join the circlejerk to reap rewards. For example if circlejerk is formed around the content that is promoting steem, and posting about how awesome it is, then why should users (if rewards are incentive) write for example in-depth 3d modeling tutorials and put effort in it and get up to $1, when they can just post some no-effort content about how steem is going to the moon and get upvoted (and thus rewarded) by bots.
            If you go more in-depth, you will realize steem is Rube-Goldberg machine that does not work in favor of content creators that want to be paid for honest work.

            ---

            Another thing I wanted to try was change the upvote system to resemble that of medium's where you can 'applaud' any post up to 50 times.

            I don't like mediums approach because I remember how some users were deceived - they thought that 50-60 people "already" liked their blog posts, but actually if you inspected, it was few dudes maxing the claps. So it's misleading in my opinion. Of course, not misleading if you click for more details, but presumably not a lot of people will do that.
            Thus I presume also that a lot of people when they see 3k claps, they think it's 3k upvotes from different entities, which might not be correct.

            In terms of upvoting, Reddit has a bunch of filters so it's pretty hard to game their upvote/system. I like how you did it.

            I'm not sure what they have done (it's probably complex algos), but users can still be banned (i.e. censored) there, and can still be attacked by downvotes by certain circlejerks or trolls. So you can't really express yourself on every content. I think I know how to solve this, but I will not go into details here, because I have not yet coded comment moderation tools (which will not be banning users, but something different).

            One thing me and my co-founder were doing was responding to almost every single post trying to set a model for new users to follow--and it kind of worked, but we both fell back on it because it's hard to keep up haha.

            Yeah, that's understandable. Probably there was too little people to group around certain category? For example I couldn't comment on startup which deals with manufacturing of tractors. Know nothing about that.

            Have you tried opening for example a Discord or Telegram group? I guess for casual chat and perhaps feedbacks between community members. Wonder how that would go.

  2. 2

    You can think about it from another perspective.

    Your project provides value for people in a way you didn't expect from the start. You can try to block such activity or provide some additional tools for users to provide even more value.

    Based on your description it can be some sort of catalogue, may be with paid highlighting or so.

    Good luck!

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